Posted on 05/13/2002 6:27:38 PM PDT by Siobhan
Liberals Planning for Vatican III?
by Deal Hudson, Editor of Crisis Magazine
I guess it was just a matter of time. As you and I both know, critics of the Church are taking advantage of the sex scandal to push forward their own agendas. We've seen it time and again in newspaper editorials, radio call-in shows, and TV interview programs.
And now, to the list, we can add The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) -- that venerable old institution of tedious (and increasingly gray-haired) dissent. CRISIS reader Danny deBruin alerted us to NCR's latest overturn-the-Church scheme.
The newest issue sports a provocative cover story: "Blueprint for Vatican III." And in case you're wondering, the article does not disappoint.
Here's how it works: The NCR's editors sent a request to "Catholics in various parts of the world." They asked each person to list three issues they believe a future general council of the Catholic Church must address, along with 12 additional items they'd like to see on the council's agenda. The results were collated, edited, and printed in NCR.
Who were these "Catholics" chosen to represent the opinions of the universal Church? We're never told. Everything was conducted anonymously. But NCR does tease us a bit, saying that the respondents included one cardinal and three bishops (the remainder consisted of nuns, priests, and laity).
I know, I know. You can't wait to get the results. Well, I won't torture you, so here they are... Shockingly enough, NCR discovered that "the people of God" want to see the next council mandate a married clergy, women priests, complete freedom on all the sexual issues (contraception, homosexuality, etc., etc.), and democratization in the leadership of the Church.
Let me give you a couple juicy examples, along with my comments in brackets...
"Respondents wanted the widest possible participation of all the church in the next council, laity -- single and married -- and women religious and priests present as a group in proportion to the number of bishops present. A cardinal in a developing country wrote that all religions should be invited 'and have the right to vote.'"
[Did you catch that last bit? So, non-Christians should be given the right to vote on Catholic doctrine? Hmm... I wonder how Muslims and Buddhists would vote on the issue of Christ's divinity?]
"I would like to see a discipleship of equals. The issue goes to the heart of the patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the church and the false holding of one person above another. It means opening all church offices to women. It means shifting the weight of power away from Rome and church pulpits to the people of God. It means getting rid of all parent-child terminology like "Father" (Holy and otherwise), and attendant behaviors."
[Get rid of "Father" terminology? Sounds like this respondent has more of a problem with Jesus than with the Church.]
"We must search for a coherent and persuasive moral stance on sexual morality: marriage and its support systems, family planning, reconciliation after divorce, homosexual activity, natural law."
[I wonder what that respondent's "persuasive moral stance" on those issues might be?]
"Now, only the hierarchy has real power. Others are merely tokens. This accounts for all the ills of the church, from pedophilia to financial abuse to theological violence."
[Ah yes, a powerful Church hierarchy caused pedophilia. Isn't it more likely that the sex-abuse scandal -- which again ISN'T pedophilia -- could have something to do with the outrageous number of active homosexuals in the priesthood? And aren't those active homosexuals there because of the liberal seminary policies urged on by the kinds of people who read NCR? A little food for thought.]
"Seminaries need to be closed and modeled after the experimental seminary training proposed by Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara and some Protestant types of training such as Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and Berkeley Feminist D. Min courses."
[Yes, that should pack in the seminarians. After all, what young man doesn't want to be harangued by an angry feminist for his "misogyny" and "homophobia"?]
"The whole question of infallibility and the role of the magisterium needs to be looked at. Both of these issues can be like nuclear weapons in the wrong hands."
Well, you get the picture. NCR devotees, like so many other aging radicals, still live in a past where 1960s-style dissent is bright and new. But the truth is something quite different. The mainline liberal Protestant churches are fading away... some predict that the Methodist and Episcopal churches may not even exist a century from now. Which Protestant denominations are growing? The conservative, orthodox, evangelical churches.
This same phenomenon holds true in the Catholic Church. The orthodox dioceses are vibrant and bursting with vocations. Just take a trip to Denver or Northern Virginia if you doubt it. Conversely, the dioceses that likely receive NCR in their chanceries are shriveling up.
It's revealing, I think, that out of the 300 requests NCR sent out, only 60 came back. That's a pretty sad response for a group that claims to speak for the average Catholic.
The simple truth is the heady days of dissent are dead and gone. It just seems that some people refuse to leave the funeral.
It is impossible to talk to a fundamentalist about Scripture, because, well, every word in Scripture has to be literally true, or the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
How dare the spiritual leader alter a single word.
This is why the Catholic Church's approach to Scripture is so refreshing. I don't have to rely on YOU to interpret Scripture for me or your brother, who may have an entirely different interpretation than you.
How tempting to conjecture! The cardinal? I'd put money on Roger Mahony. And, judging from interviews with religious by our local media, I would submit that the others were from the Albany diocese. This weekend, we saw Bishop Hubbard interviewed by the Fox affiliate. Asked about the possibility of married clergy and female priests, he projected this would happen with the next pope. Only this evening, the local CBS affiliate interviewed the Director of Catholic Schools, a nun. She scoffed at the media for suggesting that homosexuality had anything to do with the church scandal. She said that "statistics" had already disproved this notion, but quoted no sources or numbers. Oh yes, we have one more "claim to fame". The Albany diocese produced Fr. Richard Vosko, aka "the wreckovator" who has cut a swathe of church & cathedral destruction across the fruited plains.
Viva Il Papa!
The version I have, approved by John Paul II, says that homosexuality "may be genetic or influenced by environment."
The Pope doesn't know, and neither do you, what are the origins of homosexuality.
The Pope has never said that the homosexual orientation is a "blasphemy against God." Never.
Why do you always seem to take the liberal side of things?
Is expressing what the Pope actually said about homosexuality "liberal"? If making stuff up is conservative, then I'll be liberal.
And they want to weigh things in favor of the third world. Well, think this out for a second...the Muslims will simply vote that the Catholic Church deny Jesus' divinity and start kneeling towards Mecca.
The NCR people are not to be taken seriously, IMO, because they don't take the salvation of souls seriously. They seem to be rather naïve secular humanists who like to think of themselves as Catholic for purely cultural reasons.
I'm not gonna scream...I'm not gonna scream....I'm not...AAAAIIIEEEEEE!!!!
" It means shifting the weight of power away from Rome and church pulpits to the people of God."
In other words, "Goodbye, ROMAN Catholic Church." This is what they have been angling for for the last 40 years. Every time they twist the words of the Doctrine and the Scriptures, every time they ignore the words of the Pope, every time they crack down on the VICTIMS and give the PERPS a free ride on the pocketbooks of the Faithful, every time they put one of "their" men in a high office, they are chipping away at the Roman Catholic Church. It has never been their intention to simply start a NEW church created in their own image, which they would be perfectly free to do. I would even cede to them all the like-thinking "catholics" that infest the Roman Catholic Church at this time. ("Take them! Take them ALL!") It has always been since its beginning in the 50's, a concerted, careful, and deliberate campaign to destroy the Roman Catholic Church.
Actually that's one reason why I can't switch to Roman Catholicism. The music in Catholic churches is so dreadful. Good Episcopalian church choirs still sing the Mass in Latin too.
Then you better read what the Pope actually said about homosexual orientation.
Of course, our doctrine states that the true membership of the church is invisible and known only to God, and we expect it includes members of many denominations including many Catholics.
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